Tau v Daemon Tactics

[albertsevil]

Hey all,

My regular opponent is a daemon player who seems intent on beating my Tau in an arms race. Having only started about 2 months ago he now owns pretty much everything in the codex and has been creating some uber lists and refining them too. My own Tau are now looking at a win ratio of 1:1. We play normally at 1500 points.

I'm looking for any tactics for using Tau to defeat Daemons in 40K. Anything from set-up to troops and weapon advice will be greatly appreciated.

Daemons most often seen:
Bloodthirster, Lord of Change, Bloodcrushers, Changeling + 4 horrors, Soul Grinder, Plaguebearers.
He is planning on adding Fiends and Flamers for our next match.

Tau currently run:
Commander, Suits x 3 (Fusion + Plasma), Suits x 3 (Fusion + Plasma), Stealth x 6, Firewarriors x 8, FW x 8, FW x 8, FW x 8 + Devilfish, Kroot x 10, Pathfinders x 8 + Devilfish, Hammerhead.
Currently have about 70 points that can be spare so am thinking of removing the Kroot or one squad of FW and adding my 2 piranha.

With decent set up and a good first round of shooting I can easily take his force apart. However on our, often, terrain sparse boards; he can simply land in front of me, survive one round of shooting, and then be in combat all too quickly thus tying up my entire force. And we all no Tau can not do combat..

Any help will be great help. Thanks. Good gaming to all

[whitestar333]

With the Tau against Daemons you are at a severe disadvantage because the Tau are best when they have time to shoot at their opponents before they get to you - unfortunately daemons can start right in your face. Unfortunately, your particular playstyle might not be the same as mine, so it would be difficult for me to just give you a list, but here are some things you should at least consider tactically.

Reserves can be very helpful for you against daemons. If they can drop in first with nothing to shoot at or without knowing where you are going to be, their effectiveness can be mitigated. Reconsider a positional relay. Only ONE unit will arrive from reserves, but on a 2+. Holding some deep strikers in reserves and using the positional relay to drop them in can be useful mostly for keeping the other units in reserve longer (i.e. fire warriors). Consider putting crisis suits or, even better, stealth suits in reserve and then either deep striking or outflanking (in the case of stealth suits and kroot). Stealth suits can be even more effective due to always being in cover, and daemons mostly not having any grenades.

The scariest thing I ever saw was 18 outflanking stealth suits when I was outflanking my genestealers. I went first and when my genestealers came in, I moved forward. However, one unit came in on a 2+ while the other two held back. Sure, I killed that unit of suits, but then another came in on a 2+, and wiped out another unit of stealers. By that time I was so distracted/weakened that when the third unit outflanked, I couldn't deal with him and my stealers were effectively neutralized. The tactical value of the positional relay actually isn't in the 2+ arrival, but the fact that everything else stays in reserve.

You should also not underestimate the resilience of your vehicles against daemons, as they have a difficult time destroying them from range. Daemons can assault your vehicles and kill them, but if you take flachette launchers, then those daemons will think twice about it. Use your vehicles to 'castle' your firewarriors so that the firewarriors can shoot at whatever is on the other side, but cannot be assaulted unless they assault the vehicle, and then refer to my previous sentence.

Fortunately you have the high-strength weaponry to deal with Daemon princes, and in your case I would recommend hammerheads over Broadsides for two reasons: the vehicle resilience just mentioned, the lack of vehicles in the daemon codex means you need fewer rail guns, and the submunition round. You can use your hammerhead in your 'castle' as well.

Daemons are never an easy fight for the tau, but if you consider the 3-dimensionality of 5th edition with reserves, you can gain a bit of an edge. Try taking 2nd turn and holding most of your stuff in reserves, so at least you get to see what your friend has to bring against you before you commit to any one area on the board. Footslogging firewarriors are okay as long as they make sure they don't get charged (i.e. kill the enemy or protect them with your vehicles).

I would actually recommend AGAINST pathfinders for a couple reasons. They are expensive for not providing you with any additional firepower. Sure, they make the shooting you have better, but you know what else does that? More guns! For the cost of those pathfinders, the number of fire warriors you could field more than makes up for the 4 markerlight hits you'd get from them. Sure, the devilfish can scout, but again, MORE GUNS!

[DarkLink]

Plus, pathfinders are best sitting still and providing markerlight hits. If they can't do that, they're just overpriced firewarriors. And against Daemons, if you just sit your pathfinders still, you're going to get them killed before they do anything meaningful.

[slxiii]

mount everything in devilfish, use flechette dischargers, move and shoot. If you have hammerheads they are great, their template wounds alot on a 2+

[DaveLL]

Flamers, oddly enough, are unlikely to help your opponent that much. The models your opponent really wants to take out have 2 wounds each, and flamers only tend to do well against heavily-armored 1W models unless he's putting a lot of thought and effort into their placement. (As long as you're playing wound-allocation games, that is.)
Fiends will probably drive you nuts.
FWs without devilfish will die against daemons. Period. If you just want them for a single turn of shooting and then acting as bubble wrap while the rest of your army runs away, then okay... but Kroot do that about as well for fewer points. The main thing you want to do is take advantage of your mobility. With devilfish, you're fast. Most of his stuff, even though it DS's, is slow. The better part of valor is keeping away from your enemy while shooting him to bits. Keep in mind, though, who should be doing what and in what context. In a KP game, you can likely ignore the plaguebearers (though you do still want to stay away from them, of course). Your hammerhead may well be useful for drawing off the Lord of Change or Bloodthirster, as most of the rest of your opponent's army can't touch it... try making it as annoying as possible, and running it away from the rest of your army. I do hope that the Grinder is generally your primary target with the hammerhead? S10 AP1 isn't especially useful against a lot of the daemon army, but against grinders it should be nasty. Though the blast should be useful against any of his squads that rolled a 1 in their first running phase...
Last, remember that horrors are as bad as Tau in CC. Just in case it comes to that. I've had some epic slap-fights between large squads of horrors and squads of two broadsides... "Look, I got three hits! One of them wounded!" "And he saves." "Well, yeah, but I forced you to make an armor save! That totally counts as a moral victory." ;)

[gilbert93dt]

The only thing that I can add to what has been said is that you should think about changing your crisis suit load out from plasma + fusion into missle pod + burst cannon. The additional range is very important when dealing against daemons. Also 5 shots per man is much better than 2/3 shots per man, even with reduced strength and AP. Just a suggestion.

[RogueGarou]

I think it depends on the mission. If you camp an objective, then huddle together. Pour lots of fire into the Daemons that land first turn. Tau should be able to maul them if not wipe out the first wave through volume of fire. After that, the army will probably come onto the table piecemeal. Markerlights are great for countering a Daemons army when they hit. Most cover saves will be better than most Daemons natural save so ticking off a point of that save is awesome. Also, increasing your BS to hit more will hurt the Daemons army quite a bit. Having a higher Str weapon than other armies means your hits have a better chance to would little monsters and the bigger monsters alike. Even on a Great Unclean One with good Toughness and a FNP roll, if you make him roll it 20 times, some of them will fail.

Since nothing can assault when it comes into play, target shooting units that can range you first, then target Fleet or Jump units since they will get close to you most quickly. Nurgle units are slow and can wait to be targeted unless they are very close to you. Bloodletters and Bloodcrushers can be very bad news but they are normal infantry units. The Slaaneshi units and Flesh Hounds will be able to move quickly and should easily wipe out Tau with no support once in close combat. Kroot can stymie a Daemon charge but I don't think they can reliably stop it, only blunt the charge.

My Daemons have been tabled by Tau. Very bad luck in that game, though. I made a total of about 5 armor saves, including 3 and 4+, FNP, and 4+ Invul saves. I played Ku'Gath and failed 6 armor saves followed by 6 FNP rolls in a row. One turn and he was dead. There was just too much S5 stuff hitting him to shake it off.

Mostly, have fun and shoot them up. It is what Tau do. And I completely agree with the suggestions above. Vehicles need to move a bit, always. Flechette Dispensers are a good idea. Hammerhead Railguns using the template are going to be better than the solid shot against most targets. Ion Cannons are a good choice but not as good unless you know you will not be facing any MCs or Soul Grinders. You will trade the template scattering for direct fire (and direct misses).

[albertsevil]

Hey, thanks for all the suggestions.

Played against his daemons last night and lost horribly. Partially due to the fact I couldn't roll high to save my life but mostly because his first wave landed right in my face and shot up everything. I castled with troops behind transports and suits hidden etc but those pesky flamer template attacks (wind of chaos? wounds on 4+) were deadly. With concentrated fire I was barely able to kill one daemon prince, imobilise his Soul Grinder and wound his Lord of Change twice. Come second turn he was in combat tying up all my suits and shooting up my FW.

His first wave consisted of:
Tzeentch Daemon Prince, LoC (kitted out to the max) , Sould Grinder (all 3 shooting weapons), Horrors x5 (+pesky Changeling), Flamers x3, Bloodcrushers x5 (kitted out for wound allocation).

Second was something like:
Bloodthirster, Plaguebearers x7, even more plaguebearers x7.

If I move my vehicles to get out of his range then I loose a turn of shooting, but if I shoot and don't kill them all I die in combat. I have tried flechette launchers but as he attacks my vehicles with his bloodthirster in combat they don't seem to do much at all.

I will be, again, trying to use reserves but last time I tried that my army came in piece-meal and was destroyed at leisure by daemons who had camped on my board edge (guaranted assault range). Have people got any advice on using Tau reserves effectively? I would use the positional relay upgrade but with only one unit coming in the rest stay in reserve and by the time they do come in all of the daemons will be on the board.

Lastly, my hammerhead has only once managed to get a kill shot on his Soul Grinder and even then it passed its cover save. Last night attempted to use Piranha to finish it off failed to even hit. Any words of advice for dealing with Soul Grinders?

Now a rules question if I may; his SG scattered off the board and I was able to place him due to the deepstrike mishap table, I placed him facing with his back armour to me, however the rulebook says walkers may pivot in the shooting phase. Does this mean the whole walker turns around? Or is it only the weapons systems that can move which turn? I.e. the turret of a Defiler, or the torso of a Dreadnought? We played it as the whole vehicle may turn around in order to shoot.

Many thanks, good gaming

[DaveLL]

That's an illegal force separation. He must divide the UNITS evenly, not the models. (I made that mistake with my daemons when I was first learning the army, so I think it's understandable, but it is definitely illegal.)

[Nabterayl]

If I move my vehicles to get out of his range then I loose a turn of shooting, but if I shoot and don't kill them all I die in combat. I have tried flechette launchers but as he attacks my vehicles with his bloodthirster in combat they don't seem to do much at all.
I'm confused by this comment. Your best protection against daemons assaulting your vehicles is speed - even a Bloodthirster can be denied for several turns if he has to roll a 6 to hit you in the first place, and thanks to multi-trackers, even your non-Fast vehicles can move 12" and still shoot one weapon (e.g., the railgun). One thing to remember when zipping around like this is that you don't necessarily have to run away from the fight to be hard to hit. I've seen opponents with multi-tracker Hammerheads neutralize their own vehicle because they were moving at top speed away from the fight while frantically firing at the units I was chasing them with - the Hammerhead would have been just as hard to hit if it had been moving toward the main fight, though. You don't have to move all 12", either - you're just as hard to hit in assault if you move 7" as you are if you move 12", which can be a useful thing to remember when you're trying to keep your speed up but the battlefield is getting crowded.


I will be, again, trying to use reserves but last time I tried that my army came in piece-meal and was destroyed at leisure by daemons who had camped on my board edge (guaranted assault range). Have people got any advice on using Tau reserves effectively? I would use the positional relay upgrade but with only one unit coming in the rest stay in reserve and by the time they do come in all of the daemons will be on the board.
If you're using the positional relay, consider using it to delay your Reserves. For instance, you can use the PR to ensure that your heaviest-hitting units only start rolling to come in on Turn 3, when they come in on a 3+. The key to any use of Reserves against a Deep Striking army is that you can force the enemy to spread out (so he can intercept you with a little bit no matter where you come in), whereas you can come in and concentrate your firepower on a weak point in the enemy's line. Critically, remember that the "weak point" is not defined as the spot where you can kill the most of the enemy. The weak point is the spot where you can kill the most of the enemy while simultaneously minimizing the danger to yourself. Oftentimes this will be one wing of the enemy's line as he camps near the board edge. A bunch of daemonettes surrounded by nasty MCs is not a weak point - you may easily kill the daemonettes, sure, but then the MCs will pounce on you! In contrast, if a nasty MC is anchoring one wing of his camping line, you might pounce on that MC with everything you've got even though it's a hard target - blow that one model away, and most of his army will be out of position to respond to you, allowing your now-concentrated force to engage his army piecemeal, or forcing him to spend valuable time re-orienting his forces to hit you with several units at once.


Now a rules question if I may; his SG scattered off the board and I was able to place him due to the deepstrike mishap table, I placed him facing with his back armour to me, however the rulebook says walkers may pivot in the shooting phase. Does this mean the whole walker turns around? Or is it only the weapons systems that can move which turn? I.e. the turret of a Defiler, or the torso of a Dreadnought? We played it as the whole vehicle may turn around in order to shoot.
You played it correctly. The entire walker pivots - while many walkers are modeled with what look like turret torsos, rules-wise, all walker weapons are hull-mounted.